No, it's not that science fiction movie on Netflix.. It is not a scientific mission to Planet Saturn's moon Titan.
It is a massive project to bring more good-quality, high-paying jobs to Escambia County that will be presented by Pensacola Mayor Ashton Hayward our next upcoming meeting of the Board of County Commissioners. It will be added onto the written communication portion of our September 6th meeting.
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| Elected Officials (l to r Senator Doug Broxson, Escambia Commission Chairman Jeff Bergosh, and Pensacola Mayor Ashton Hayward Celebrated the Opening of the first ST Engineering Aerospace MRO Hangar in Pensacola on June 8, 2018 |
ST Engineering Aerospace opened their first hangar in Pensacola this past June (that opening was a fantastic day for our community), and they are ramping up toward 400 jobs in that current facility.
As the worldwide leader in the Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) Industry--ST Engineering Aerospace has facilities worldwide--but they want to massively expand their footprint here in Pensacola to keep pace with their growing business. Although their current project here in Pensacola is fantastic....it is about to get much better with Project Titan.
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| I was honored to speak at the ST Engineering Aerospace grand opening last June |
This project, if the city and the county are intelligent and go forward, will add three additional hangars at the Pensacola International Airport, as well as a brand new ST Engineering Aerospace administration facility.
The collective impacts---an additional 1,325 new direct jobs, 3400 indirect jobs, and upon full implementation, an influx of over $2 Million yearly in new ad-valorem revenue for the county as well as nearly $1 Million more in sales tax expenditures locally to support the operation which will flow back to the Board of County Commissioners.
The tentative financing of the $210 Million deal deal breaks down as follows:
Triumph Funds $56 Million
ST Engineering $35 Million
FDOT Funds $50 Million
Governor's Job fund (year 1) $4 Million
Legislative appropriation 2019 $3 Million
Governor's Job fund (year 2) $20 Million
City of Pensacola funds $8 Million
Escambia County funds $12 Million
EDA (Federal funds) $17 Million
Additional funding to be identified $5 Million
The massive positive benefits of this project will be a tremendous economic infusion into our community along with a further diversification of our jobs base. The most compelling attribute: we will get all of this financial activity and long term revenue for a very small commitment of local taxpayer funds. $91 Million, representing 43% of total project budget, is derived from non-taxpayer funding sources! When we look at just the county's portion of the deal, in order to leverage this $ 210 Million dollar initiative, our investment is a mere 5.7%.
This is a tremendous opportunity for our area, and I hope we will be able to move this forward despite the naysayers that do not believe in economic development. Economic development is vitally important role of government, no matter who says otherwise.
I'm bullish on the future of Pensacola and Escambia County--Kudos to Mayor Hayward, Governor Scott, Senator Broxson, and Florida West for helping to put this together!
Read Mayor Hayward's letter here.
4 comments:
Wow. But we have to fight tooth and nail here in Beulah for YEARS to get a traffic light installed that could've prevented at least a couple dozen accidents by now. Where did this money suddenly come from?
Sounds like a good use of triumph and other funds for long term high paying jobs.
What about our infrastructure the roads are depreciating at 12 million a year! And we resurface 6 million a year. Why are we kicking the can down the broken road
Tarafying and Anonymous 7:22--We are always playing catch-up on our infrastructure, but we are working multiple infrastructure projects right now in D1. The light at Mobile Hwy and Beulah road did take too long to get funded and programmed--and believe me that project got yanked away last year and we had to fight to get it reinstated--which we did. It will be completed later this year. And the 4-laning of 9-Mile road will be complete next year, and we are working as fast as we can on the interchange so that Beulah will have a second freeway 10 onramp--which we desperately need. So yes, the needs are many and they will never decrease but we are working within the confines of our budget and we are doing infrastructure all the time. But with that said--we must always be looking at growing our economy intelligently to provide more revenue for infrastructure and public safety as well as quality of life enhancements. That is what this project, project Titan, will do.
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